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Arthur Sackler
Arthur Sackler promotes valium in the 1960s and 1970s to deal with the anxieties in the age of the individual: the feelings of uncertainty and fear that are sweeping through the new suburbs. In 1978 the president’s wife, Betty Ford, announces on TV from the White House that she has become addicted to valium.
The company Sackler sets up with his brothers then goes on to create the opioid oxycontin – which ravages America, especially in the industrial towns where the factories have closed – and also funds a number of the major cultural institutions in the western world.
